Castle Aching

[CKPR]

1 hour ago, Regularity said:

It has already been pointed out that, in the words of Cyril Freezer, “all narrow gauge systems are self-contained”.
 

But to me, Seahouses is nothing like the original, which had all of 4 turnouts, with the engine shed at the end of the line, a run round loop, and two sidings. It doesn’t need extra sidings to become “more interesting to operate”, in fact just the opposite, and that is indicative of the era: “Ooh look, a spare corner. Let’s add another rail served industry.” 

Fair to say that Bill Tate did state that his 'Seahouses' was built just after the war before he knew about the NSR and that it was co-incidence that it looked even vaguely like the real Seahouses. There's a later article in Model Railways in the mid-1970s [my copy is currently hidden away under the eaves out of sight of Mrs CKPR-to-be] that describes the building of a fine-scale model of 'Bamburgh' to run on the Millport & Selfield.

Edited June 15, 2020 by CKPR

[CKPR]

2 hours ago, St Enodoc said:

In the words of Ira Gershwin, "It ain't necessarily so".

 

Indeed and there's an interesting pair of articles by Don Rowland in Model Railways  May and June 1977 on 'full frontal'  [oh eer missus ! It was the 1970s I suppose...] layouts i.e. no hidden fiddle yards but properly modelled marshalling yards, carriage sidings and MPDs.

[Regularity]

36 minutes ago, CKPR said:

Fair to say that Bill Tate did state that his 'Seahouses' was built just after the war before he knew about the NSR and that it was co-incidence that it looked even vaguely like the real Seahouses. There's a later article in Model Railways in the mid-1970s [my copy is currently hidden away under the eaves out of sight of Mrs CKPR-to-be] that describes the building of a fine-scale model of 'Bamburgh' to run on the Millport & Selfield.

Thanks. I didn't know about that bit.

 

I do have that article. The loco was an absolute cracker.

[brack]

3 hours ago, webbcompound said:

this bears no relation to a real-world railway, (unless on Sodor) because it is a closed system. All the railways I know have traffic coming and going from distant parts, and without that it isn't the same.

But Sodor was connected to the mainland (post 1915 I believe, but I stand ready to be corrected by ardent devotees).

 

If you modelled the Bideford, Appledore and Westward Ho! on the other hand....

[ianathompson]

8 minutes ago, brack said:

3 hours ago, webbcompound said:

 

But Sodor was connected to the mainland (post 1915 I believe, but I stand ready to be corrected by ardent devotees).

 

If you modelled the Bideford, Appledore and Westward Ho! on the other hand....

 

The German Friesian Island lines also spring to mind, although they were NG.

Some of the smaller tramways, such as York might fit the bill.

Operation was a bit limited though!

 

1 hour ago, CKPR said:

Indeed and there's an interesting pair of articles by Don Rowland in Model Railways  May and June 1977 on 'full frontal'  [oh eer missus ! It was the 1970s I suppose...] layouts i.e. no hidden fiddle yards but properly modelled marshalling yards, carriage sidings and MPDs.

 

 I remember reading those articles as an undergraduate and being impressed by the reasoning.

The fly in the ointment was that a train seemed to circle the mainline until it could be dealt with in the yard.

He seems to have stuck with his basic philosophy however as his line was frequently featured in MRJ until recently.

 

Ian T

[scottystitch]

Wasn't the Isle of Wight a SG closed system?

 

Best

Scott.

[Northroader]

Or this lot, if you like a nice compact prototype.

[Donw]

1 hour ago, webbcompound said:

 

and that is the point. whilst enjoyable to trundle about on, and good fun,  this bears no relation to a real-world railway, (unless on Sodor) because it is a closed system. All the railways I know have traffic coming and going from distant parts, and without that it isn't the same. That is why, whatever the size of the layout, there has to be a fiddle yard or equivalent to represent the "rest of the world".  Of course the problem arises when you want to exhibit, as fiddle yards are not part of the carefully constructed fantasy world (although exhibitionists must make up a minority of railway model/toy train enthusiasts), but at home the fiddle yard is just storage.

 

Poppycock

 

The Cambletown and machrihanish for one

The Isle of Man railways are a possible.

The Isle of Wight railways would have needed a lot of space but todays truncated railway would definately be a possible. 

The Tal y Llyn, Ffestiniog, and Vale of Rheidol could all be done

 

A light railway could be done with just an exchange siding hardly a fidle yard.

 

Don

 

[Nearholmer]

4 hours ago, webbcompound said:

bears no relation to a real-world railway, (unless on Sodor) because it is a closed system.

 

Yes, well, maybe, maybe not.

 

Plenty of islands had closed-system railways,  The Isle of Wight, Isle of Man, and Majorca spring instantly to mind, and Sodor didn't, and there are/were other closed-systems, not on islands.

 

But, it is a quite limiting concept for a layout, so I tend to agree that, much as I like the M&S (Its not just a railway ........), I would give it an exchange with the rest of Britain's railways, so that I could run a greater variety of goods wagons. A train ferry might serve if I was feeling islandish.

 

(Don's reply, which I hadnt seen when typing mine, is brilliant!)

 

PPS: A closed island system has one massive advantage, of course: a good deep moat to keep Midland five-plankers out of the place!

Edited June 15, 2020 by Nearholmer

[CKPR]

Millport & Selfield Part 2 - When Bill Tate said that the Millport & Selfield was run by the book, he wasn't kidding ! I'd take  those block instruments and home-made rheostat controllers over DCC and smartphone apps any day. 

Edited June 16, 2020 by CKPR

[CKPR]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

There is, of course, something inherently difficult about a standard gauge 'closed system'

Many industrial lines dating back to  pre-grouping days were effectively 'closed systems' even though there were nominal connections to the national network - The North East seemed to abound in them, with the Bowes Rly, the South Shields, Marston & Whitburn and my favourite,  the overhead  electric Harton Colliery Rly (1908-1989) https://co-curate.ncl.ac.uk/harton-electric-railway/

 

[Edwardian]

34 minutes ago, CKPR said:

Many industrial lines dating back to  pre-grouping days were effectively 'closed systems' even though there were nominal connections to the national network - The North East seemed to abound in them, with the Bowes Rly, the South Shields, Marston & Whitburn and my favourite,  the overhead  electric Harton Colliery Rly (1908-1989) https://co-curate.ncl.ac.uk/harton-electric-railway/

 

 

Hence I said rare from the 1840s!  Before then we have isolated public lines, e.g. Liverpool & Manchester and Bodmin & Wadebridge, but their predecessors were the private railways of the Great Northern Coalfield. Their purpose was not to link with other railways, but to link the collieries with the river staiths and the sea.  Nevertheless, as the Nineteenth Century progressed, typically these lines became linked to one another and to the national network. 

 

Thus, although retaining key characteristics of closed systems in their operation - their own locos and wagons engaged in moving coal to waterside destinations, rather than on the national network, typically they did not remain strictly-speaking closed systems.  Take your example of the Bowes Railway - the Pontop & Jarrow before 1932 - that existed to take coal to Jarrow Staiths, but connected with the NER at at least 3 places. 

 

Now, closed system or not, if it's too big to model all of it, surely you're in the same territory as any other modeller who has an offstage 'rest of the world' or 'rest of the system' fiddleyard?

 

 

Edited June 15, 2020 by Edwardian

[Hroth]

I think Kipling had the right of it, as in poetry, as in model railways...

 

"There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right!"

 

 

Exit stage left, pursued by a member of the ursine species......

[CKPR]

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

 

 

Thus, although retaining key characteristics of closed systems in their operation - their own locos and wagons engaged in moving coal to waterside destinations, rather than on the national network, typically they did not remain strictly-speaking closed systems.  Take your example of the Bowes Railway - the Pontop & Jarrow before 1932 - that existed to take coal to Jarrow Staiths, but connected with the NER at at least 3 places. 

 

 

 

 

 

Fair point, your honour but I stand by my original contention regarding the Harton Colliery line, which was definitely more of a self-contained  system than the other north eastern pit-to-port lines  of a similar ilk mentioned  and there was a plan for a layout based on the HCR that was published, I think,  in Scale Model Trains in the 1980s (long before the lovely Judith Edge kits for the HCR electric engines).

Edited June 15, 2020 by CKPR

[brianusa]

Ever since our very first one, layouts have been closed mainly by the inclusion of a circle of track in the box!  Only when more track became available it still was closed by virtue of being an oval or a larger circle.  Even now with a fair amount of room, both my main lines form a over and under circle with sidings, turntables and buildings in the middle.  There is enough space to keep at least three trains in sidings and loops so a fiddle yard is not really necessary.  But then, I'm easily pleased!

      Brian.

[Regularity]

Real railways go from A to B. Sometimes one or both of those happens to be a junction to somewhere else, but if you travel from (say) Liverpool Lime Street to London Euston, you travel terminus to terminus.

What that layout lacked, maybe, was a connection to elsewhere, what the Americans refer to as "staging". Does't stop it being authentic in respect of travelling from one terminus to another; at least there was a junction based on Chathil to add some variety!

[Donw]

What I would suggest is building a light railway with at least three stations, two terminii and a central through station make that a junction and add a branch to a small terminus, possible another though station on the main and you have a nice system at one of the terminii provide an exchange siding . The connection from the wider world can be dummy. At the start of a session you place a train of goods wagons supposedly shunted there from the nearest main railway. You can then run the system the goods wagons mixed with others delivering within the system are dealt with alongside the passenger trains.  Wagons to depart the the system are collected and placed in the exchange siding. These are removed at the end of a session and replaced with some arriving for the next session. In fact I would swap wagons at tea break allowing two arrivals and departures per session. Just got to build it and find suitable operators.

 

Don

[CKPR]

Sounds like the Shropshire & Montgomery could the basis for just such a scheme ? 

[ian]

1 hour ago, CKPR said:

Sounds like the Shropshire & Montgomery could the basis for just such a scheme ? 

 

But it would be more tea break than operating session...

[Donw]

Well yes. Unfortunately the line was closed by the time we lived in the area. When living at Bayston Hill I did walk the dogs across the field to watch a 47 collecting stone trains.  I knew the Abbey quite well but the old station site then an oil depot siding was closed off. The old track bed an past the bottom of the in-laws house and could be accessed  this was close to Meole Brace. Probably too many stations to include them all.  There were connections to the Cambrian at Llanymynech  so not closed.

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

When I had an H0 layout representing the terminus of a US short line that had only one train each day, I used to operate by notional calendar, rather than notional clock, so rather than, say, the 11:23am arrival, followed by the 1:12pm departure, I would have the Tuesday arrival, followed by the Wednesday departure. Might work for the S&M in its more arthritic phase.

[webbcompound]

well I said unless you are modelling Sodor, which of course is an island so I meant it to stand for island systems, which let us be honest are not commonplace, and will usually operate with quite limited stock. As for narrow guage, well the layout in question isn't. It is standard guage, with fairly mainline looking stock, and narrow guage railways are a different animal (which in layout terms is often unfortuately a rabbit). Branch lines and short lines are of course quite limited but by definition they branch off the main line, so are not closed systems and so some kind of exchange facility is required. Industrial railways are pretty limited as they involve moving a product from its origin to a trans-shipment point or single consumer, so operationally they are fairly minimal. 

[Regularity]

3 hours ago, CKPR said:

Sounds like the Shropshire & Montgomery could the basis for just such a scheme ? 

 

2 hours ago, ian said:

 

But it would be more tea break than operating session...

You say that as if it’s a problem...

 

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

When I had an H0 layout representing the terminus of a US short line that had only one train each day, I used to operate by notional calendar, rather than notional clock, so rather than, say, the 11:23am arrival, followed by the 1:12pm departure, I would have the Tuesday arrival, followed by the Wednesday departure. Might work for the S&M in its more arthritic phase.

The Louisville and Wadley Railroad in the 1940s operated a “mixed train daily”, the usefulness of which to passengers was evidenced by the number of people who travelled on it: 31 in a whole year! Part of that may be down to the courtesy shown yo some of their customers: they thought nothing of hanging around for a few extra hours whilst furniture was loaded from the factory into a box car, to make sure it was picked up the next morning for onward shipment.

 

It’s like Puckoon, where a passenger is extremely annoyed on turning up a few minutes late, only to see the train departing at the scheduled time. On complaining, he is told that he saw yesterday’s train, which was running a whole day late...

[St Enodoc]

14 hours ago, ianathompson said:

 

 

What about narrow gauge lines?

I model narrow gauge following the ideas of those presented in the sixties magazines, such as the Aire Valley.

They managed very well without fiddle yards (although mine does have a "dressed" one).

 

Ian T

My favourite was the late David Lloyd's Augher Valley Railway.

[Edwardian]

13 hours ago, Donw said:

What I would suggest is building a light railway with at least three stations, two terminii and a central through station make that a junction and add a branch to a small terminus, possible another though station on the main and you have a nice system at one of the terminii provide an exchange siding . The connection from the wider world can be dummy. At the start of a session you place a train of goods wagons supposedly shunted there from the nearest main railway. You can then run the system the goods wagons mixed with others delivering within the system are dealt with alongside the passenger trains.  Wagons to depart the the system are collected and placed in the exchange siding. These are removed at the end of a session and replaced with some arriving for the next session. In fact I would swap wagons at tea break allowing two arrivals and departures per session. Just got to build it and find suitable operators.

 

Don

 

I like this idea. 

 

'The rest of the world' is represented by a single siding.  This could, in turn, be fed by a cassette.  Thus, there is no need to model the physical connection with the 'other company's' mainline, or the rest of that company's goods yard, or, indeed, its passenger station.

 

The 'offstage' area is, thus, reduced to a cassette holding a cut of wagons destined for the modelled system. To retain the 'purity' of an open, fully scenic, layout, that could be a scenic cassette.  I have seen this done a couple of times.  The cassette, or really a plank, can feature be a length of ballasted track that slots into the modelled yard. 

 

Off course, stock may simply be placed on the siding, but a cassette system allows more variety, in, say, x4 pre-prepared cuts of 5-6 wagons, ready at the start of an operating sessions with the minimum of stock handling.

 

One cassette could contain a mainline though coach or, if the length is available, even the occasional mainline through train (e.g. the SE&CR was known to have sent a through excursion over the K&ESR). 

 

Somewhere, though however hard I look for it I cannot find it, the Madder Valley Railway must have had such a siding.  How else to those GW and SR wagons manage to appear?!

 

The disadvantages of a closed system

 

Without through goods traffic, the economy of the district served by your railway is somewhat compromised! The impetus for most railway building in this country was to gain local access to national markets.  A closed system denies your district the essential benefit of any public railway.  

 

Mention was made of the Bideford Appledore & Westward Ho!, a closed standard gauge system.  Well, I think the dates here tell you the brutal truth: Opened 1901; completed 1908; closed 1917.  It was mainly a passenger line and, perhaps, is more akin to a local electric tram system than anything else. 

 

The semi-closed or largely closed island system

 

Any truly closed system is likely to be one on an Island, like Isle of Wight, or, my joke version, an inland island in the fens. Here in and outgoing traffic is essentially waterborne. 

 

An island system can also be a good basis for a semi-closed system in that it is a means to limit the connection to the national network to a single point.  This could be the bridge to Sodor or, as has been mentioned, a train ferry.  This is a good 'cake and eat it'  option because it leaves you with many of the attributes of a closed system, with most traffic 'within system', but allows the variety of some foreign stock.    

 

Here there may be a cassette just beyond the bridge, or, and this has certainly been done at least once, the cassette is the train ferry model. 

 

The Mineral Line as a closed or semi-closed system  

 

Mention has been made of railways that were not primarily interested in getting people and general goods to and from the national system.  These tend to be mineral lines, though some had some limited passenger services, so you have to like running just rakes of whichever of coal/ironstone/granite/china clay etc etc, largely to the exclusion of most other traffic.

 

These are typically concerned with transporting minerals to shipping, with connections to the railway network as largely incidental. Mention has been made of the private railways of the North East.  Another favourite example is Caradon - Liskeard - Looe.  A mineral line from the moors to the sea, but with some passenger services and that saw the introduction a spur taking passenger traffic to the GWR.  

 

Narrow gauge

 

Here, again, for the survival or your system, if it is to be a public railway, there needs to be a connection with the Wider World, but here a transshipment siding with a purely decorative length of SG suffices; there is a transfer of goods, but not of stock*

 

EDIT: * (a) The Leek & Manifold introducing an interesting twist, of course. (b) The Lynton & Barnstaple having a transshipment siding at Barnstaple Town but, apparently often neglected in favour of carting goods by road across the river from the LSWR station at Barnstaple Junction.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited June 16, 2020 by Edwardian